McKinsey'sDorna L. Hoffman wrote an interesting article on this: "Managing beyond Web 2.0". The Internet behavior of on-line visitors is getting more and more complex, and they strongly guard their on-line experiences.

An example is how they use YouTube and Flickr to share information. They value this information much more than any corporate information you provide on your web-site. This is because it is, or seems (!), an independent source of information, not with the primary goal meeting some sales target.

McKinsey advertises their LEAD methodology to create a road-map to manage the continuously changing on-line world: Beyond 2.0!. LEAD stands for:

Listen
Your organization should have a formal process to monitor and analyze your on-line customers.

Experiment
Give your on-line community new tools, and test them out.

Apply
Roll-out the tools that demonstrated being successful.

Develop
Develop an integrated marketing channel program, incorporating the Web, and all other channels.

This is a sound methodology, and a sound advice. Why? Leave out Web and on-line customers, and it still stands! So it is not very specific targeted at the on-line community.

Is this a problem? No, I don't think so. Since a long time 1 of the best approaches to successful business management, including sales and marketing, has been the relative customer perception of quality methodology. In short: Make sure that your customer segments have the perception that you are a little better than your competition in that segment, and stay that little bit ahead! This approach has been around quite some time, is independent of business domains, and is still working handsomely for a lot of companies!

Do you want to stay ahead of your competition? How do you do that? What works for you, and what does not?

We like to hear from you. Please let us know how you cope with the changing web environment. And how you think to stay ahead of Web 3.0 challenges! Contact Hans Lodder, and see for yourself how Hans can help you improve your business!

Hans van Nes has presented us his ideas regarding on what rules a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) should obey, and how that results in KPI's for Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Information and Computer Technology (ICT) organization. Curiosity raises the question whether a collection of KPI's is also a dashboard. Or do we need to do something extra for this to happen? And what is the answer to 'how'?